[XIII]

Another one I can think of is The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis- Maynard G. Krebs gets referenced a lot in US media- in fact Shaggy from Scooby Doo was based on him (in fact, the main 4 Scooby characters were based on the main 4 characters from that show- contuining Hanna-Barbera's trend of ripping off sitcoms for their cartoons). And just like Gilligan- it's Bob Denver again, maybe our broadcasters had a thing against him

As far as I can tell, the only time it was shown in the UK was a single episode as part of a BBC2 theme night in the early 90s.

It's incredible that nobody sued Hanna Barbara for ripping off sitcoms, Jackie Gleeson came close as The Flintstones is essentially The Honeymooners in the Stone Age but he didn't want to be the person who took Fred Flintstone off the air.

It's a testament to Hanna Barbera that despite this, their cartoons are remembered more fondly than the sitcoms they ripped off.

[James2001]

And Scooby Doo is still making new episodes after 53 years. And Frank Welker has been playing Fred that entire time.

The Honeymooners itself is quite interesting in UK terms too- it did have sporadic runs on some ITV companies in the 50s and 60s, but the only proper run it had was on BBC2 during 1989-91. Though they did skip one episode- incidentally the episode originally broadcast on November 5th 1955- the day Marty goes back to in Back To The Future (though the episode you see them watching in the film is actually a different one that wasn't shown until nearly 2 months later).

The show itself is interesting, as it began as a regular sketch on Jackie Gleason's variety show, and when it became a proper series, he felt it didn't work as well because it was tied to just being a half hour, whereas the sketches varied from being very short to nearly the full hour of the variety show. Then when the series ended, it went back to being sketches on his various variety shows for the next 20 years. The actual series proper is only a very small part of the show's history, which spanned nearly 30 years!

Incidentally, a bit of research shows the first ever US sitcom shown in the UK was Amos 'n Andy (a show that's hugely controversial in itself), which the BBC showed between 1954 and 1957. Not sure if it was the first US show entirely though.

[JAS84]

Was it skipped because it's wiped? That would also explain BTTF using a different episode.

[James2001]

Was it skipped because it's wiped? That would also explain BTTF using a different episode.

No, they all exist, and always have. I think BTTF chose the episode they did because it's the most famous one, and it sets up Marty pretending to be a spaceman later in the film, even if it wasn't historically accurate. I don't know what the reason behind the BBC not showing it was, but it's always been there on the various VHS, DVD and Blu-Ray releases over the decades.

American networks seem to have been reasonably good at keeping their television, prime time at least (daytime stuff on the other hand...), also helps that they made large amounts of content on film, which you obviously can't physically wipe and re-use, plus even the live stuff had to be recorded so it could be time delayed for the west coast (either that or performed again 3 hours later- though that did happen sometimes as well), so it's not as if it went out live and unrecorded and was gone. Though even large amounts of late 50s and 60s VT survives of US TV which as we know isn't the case here, with very little pre-early 70s VT surviving. Most major US primetime shows from the 50s, 60s and 70s have their complete runs surviving, which we know isn't anything remotely the case here.

[JAS84]

Unless they aired on the DuMont Network of course. Wasn't their archive dumped in a river?

[James2001]

Dumped in the Hudson I read, incredibly sad situation there.

[Neil Jones]

Dumped in the Hudson I read, incredibly sad situation there.

Although ironically enough it survived longer in an archive than the network itself.

Anyway I dare say anything high profile enough from DuMont was already safe, assuming it hadn't been wiped before then anyway.

[TVNerd]

Dumped in the Hudson I read, incredibly sad situation there.

On the theme of US Late Night Shows from earlier in the thread, I think Conan O’Brien used this as the basis for a sketch (at the start of the linked video) where he supposedly dumps his own show’s tapes in the Hudson http://youtube.com/watch?v=GV1qCL3-XKU

[JHarper_2022]

Another US sitcom that never made it to the UK was an US version of the classic BBC sitcom Till Death Us Do Part, All in the Family starring the late Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton, the series ran for 9 seasons but for some reason never took off here in the UK.

The same can be said with their spinoff The Jeffersons which ran for 11 seasons, both shows were very popular in the 1970s even referenced in Family Guy and The Simpsons at least more than once.

[Whataday]

Survivor ... Itv got the rights had big advertising campaign even flame hearts on break bumpers but had wrong host a news reader and wasn't entertaining just bore throughout. Itv had the 8pm slot on Tue and Thur for the interview with the eliminated contestants but it soon moved the show after the news as ratings flopped. 

Remember a second survivor series on itv that was more compact and on less nights in the week but again failed to gain interest.

Worth mentioning Survivor is in fact a British format created by Planet 24 which just got picked up first in the US.